Encyclopedia

DRIVERS: GUY EDWARDS

The son of a Royal Air Force Squadron Leader, Edwards was born in Macclesfield in the industrial heartland of England during World War II and spent his childhood in the north of the country. After graduating from the University of Durham Edwards took a racing school course at Brands Hatch with the famous Motor Racing Stables organisation and began racing a Ford Anglia in 1965. This was followed by a Mini and in 1968 he tried his hand at Formula 3. However he did not have the money to do a proper job and so switched to two-litre sportscar racing in the years that followed. Single-seater racing remained unfinished business and in 1972 he raised the money to move into Formula 5000 with a McLaren 10B. He was then able to land backing from Barclays Bank which financed drives in both Formula 5000 and sportscars.

In 1974 he talked his way into the second seat with Graham Hill's Embassy Racing but did only seven races before he broke his wrist in a Formula 5000 accident. He returned to F1 in 1976 in a Hesketh with backing from Penthouse and Rizla and at the German GP was one of the four drivers who helped to pull Niki Lauda out of the wreck of his burning Ferrari. Edwards was later awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal for his actions.

After that Edwards raced in the British Formula 1 Championship and then moved fulltime into sportscars and won two rounds of the World Sportscar Championship in a Lola-Ford T600 in 1981. His commercial activities then took priority and he was involved with sponsor-hunting with the March F1 team until 1985 when he went freelance and landed the Silk Cut sponsorship for Tom Walkinshaw's Jaguar sportscars for 1986-91. In 1987 he negotiated a major deal with Castrol to sponsor the IMSA Jaguars.

He made a racing comeback in 1988 having found sponsorship from Kaliber, low alcohol beer, for the British Touring Car Championship but in 1992 became director of marketing at Team Lotus, signing up Castrol as the team's major sponsor for the 1993 season. Since 1994 Edwards has used his abilities to sell sponsorship to cities around the world, his major deal being the HSBC sponsorship of London's airports.